The impact of the local contextualisation of successive rounds of educational decentralisation reform on organisational learning and capacities of rural educational governance structures is examined. From locating schools in local self-government in the mid-1990s, the focus shifted in the 2000s to school accountability. This shift induced a reconstruction of the “risk” posed by the earlier round of reform and the identification of aspects of organisational learning to be retained or discarded. Such an ability to choose is an important indicator of organisational capacity for reform. The next round of reforms should include academic supervision in the accountability mandate.